Questionable Humanity
by Gigabomb
Summary: Having been in Sound Village only three months, Kidoumaru is still trying to get used to his new life as a shinobi, and an illbegotten venture into Orochimaru's laboratory doesn't do much to help him adjust.


Author's Note: Rather depressing Kidoumaru childhood fic. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

He knew, of course, that he wasn't supposed to be here. He had been told that often enough. But hell, he was only eight years old. What kind of child would avoid something so obviously forbidden just because of its cool factor?

Still, even if he had been intensely curious about the forbidden place ever since he had arrived three months ago, a part of him still cringed deeply at the thought of so directly disobeying Orochimaru-sama. Most of that was a fear of getting caught (Orochimaru-sama was extremely intimidating. He had not as yet given his new teacher a reason to punish him, but damn, even if he had been more shocked than anything at the time, the memory of the razing of his home village still gave him the screaming nightmares sometimes), but some of it was shame. When you owed a person pretty much everything, knowingly going against their expressed orders was one of the things that destroyed any honor a man might have. That being said, Kidoumaru wasn't a man. He was eight years old, and until three months ago he had been considered a bastard at best and demon-spawn at worst, and that was by his family. He had no honor to speak of. And wasn't Orochimaru-sama telling him not to be so timid all the time? To not just stand their passively when something happened? Of course, that had probably been in reference to Tayuya's insults and not sneaking into the forbidden place, but the principle still stood, probably. Hopefully Orochimaru-sama would see it that way if he was found out.

The door was locked. Kidoumaru had come prepared for this. Three months training on how to get into places where he wasn't supposed to be was finally going to pay off.

The first lock pick snapped. Hm. Perhaps this wasn't going to be so easy. Or maybe it was. The vents weren't very big (there was no way in hell that, say, Jiroubou could fit through them), but a childhood of deprivation came in handy sometimes. So did the ability to stick to walls, as the vent in question was a good fifteen feet above his head.

It took him a minute to figure out how to put the vent cover back so it didn't attract notice, but his fingers were slender and nimble and he still had a spare lock pick, so tightening the screws back into place didn't take long. And then he was on his way. Kidoumaru wasn't exactly sure that the vents went to the forbidden place, but the door had appeared fairly airtight and Orochimaru-sama went in there enough (occasionally with Kabuto. Some people got all the luck), and it wasn't like his teacher would let himself suffocate.

It turned out his hunch was right. Kidoumaru started to congratulate himself, but getting a mouthful of vent dust in his mouth set off a coughing fit, and the pride melted away, leaving only a paralyzing fear behind. The cough would echo. What if someone heard?

No one did, luckily, but Kidoumaru remained tense. He suddenly became very aware of what he was doing. Sneaking through a very tight vent into a place where he had explicitly been told not to go didn't sound like such a good idea anymore, not only because of the possibility of being found out, but also because of the off chance that Orochimaru-sama hadn't forbidden them from this area because he wanted his privacy, but because it was actually dangerous. And the vent was too narrow for Kidoumaru to turn around, something he now wanted to do most desperately.

((Okay, calm down, Kidoumaru. Orochimaru-sama is always praising you for having an analytical mind, now is a good time to put it to use.)) Of course, putting it to use _before _he pulled off this little stunt would have been an even better idea, but in this case hindsight was useless. Kidoumaru was valued for his ability to think ahead and adjust to new situations, but for someone who had basically raised himself, his common sense left something to be desired.

Going back wasn't an option. Forward wasn't such a great choice either, but there was no way he was going to die in a vent after finally escaping the hell where he had been raised. So Kidoumaru moved, careful to breath shallowly and mostly through his nose to avoid inhaling more of the grime in the air.

It was probably no longer than five minute later that he saw the subdued filtered light coming in through another vent cover, but staving off hysteria stemming from a newly discovered case of claustrophobia made the time stretch in the direction of infinity. Kidoumaru was almost sobbing with relief when he fumbled for his sole remaining lock pick and clumsily began to loosen the screws. He landed awkwardly, falling to his knees and using his arms to break most of the fall, the vent grate clattering to the concrete floor beside him, reverberating throughout the darkened hallway. Silence followed his rather noisy entrance, but all the same, Kidoumaru couldn't help but feel like he was being watched. His suspicions only heightened as he crept down the corridor. The hallway was lined with doors, and the doors were locked. The back of his neck prickled. Were those eyes peering out through the slits?

((Stop it stop it stop it, you're just being paranoid. Look for an exit, and if you run into Orochimaru-sama, tell him exactly what happened and take whatever he does to you, because it can't possibly be worse then being stuck here any longer.))

"So Orochimaru is stealing children now."

Kidoumaru froze. The voice had come from behind one of the locked doors ahead of him, and this time he _definitely_ wasn't imaging the eyes. "W-what?"

"I don't know what that power-hungry fool is thinking, experimenting on someone as young as you."

"Experimenting?" Beneath his terror, Kidoumaru was puzzled. He only had some vague idea of what 'experimenting' meant, but he couldn't recall Orochimaru-sama doing anything to him that sounded as ominous as that word.

The hidden figure gave a dark chuckle. "I must admit that creating a spider chimera is a fascinating piece of research, but it's nothing short of a miracle that your small body survived the procedure."

"I was. . . I was born like this."

"Nonsense, child. No human is born looking like you, no more than any human is born looking like me."

"Like you?" Morbid fascination overcoming Kidoumaru's initial fear-induced caution, he took a step towards to cell door.

"Like a monster. An abomination, a twisted fusion of human and animal. You and I aren't human anymore, child."

"I am human." Orochimaru-sama had told him he was, had been the first person to actually acknowledge his humanity, and Orochimaru-sama wouldn't lie to him. Would he?

"What you are is a tool, to be used by your master and then thrown away. Only pure humans are given the rights of humanity."

"You're lying."

"What?"

"Orochimaru-sama warned me about this. He told me that people would try to convince me I wasn't a person. But I am, even if you aren't."

"Child, you're being manipulated-"

"I don't care!" Even if Orochimaru-sama was kind to him, Kidoumaru knew his new teacher wasn't a kind person. But if Kidoumaru actually was a monster, he preferred the lie to the truth. Some illusions were better than reality.

He tried to run past the voice, away from the all-too-believable words that cast such doubts within him, but it wasn't that easy to escape such things.

"Hold onto your innocence as long as you can, child. You will be stripped of it soon enough."

----

Orochimaru was rarely surprised anymore, but even he was somewhat startled to turn around a corner in his laboratory and almost step on Kidoumaru, the boy huddled with his back to the wall. He had left the child with an instructor, an instructor who was very shortly going to lose his job, most likely in a very gruesome and bloody way if Orochimaru had anything to say about it, which he did. Losing one of his acquisitions mere months after finding it would have been such a ridiculous waste.

"Kidoumaru, what are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you to come so I can get out, Orochimaru-sama." From one of his other students, the response would have come across as sarcastic, but Kidoumaru was almost painfully honest and had most likely just replied to the question literally.

The boy situated himself in a position of subservience, kneeling on the hard ground with no apparent discomfort, but his voice sounded miserable. "I'm really sorry Orochimaru-sama, I got curious and by the time I realized it was a bad idea I was already stuck and I will take any punishment you give me, just. . . I want to leave this place. Please."

In truth, Orochimaru was rather impressed he had managed to find his way into here at all, but he allowed none of this to show on his face. "Does something about my laboratory frighten you, Kidoumaru?"

"There are people here who aren't people anymore. And they say I'm like them. I don't. . . I don't want to be like them." The young face that turned toward him was rift with desperation. "I am human. I don't want to be anything else." It went unvoiced, but the plea was clear in the boy's eyes. _Please tell me I'm human. Please don't tell me that what you said before is a lie._

So Orochimaru obliged. He had long been a master at saying exactly what someone wanted to hear, and children were often pathetically pliable, especially one so abused as this. Orochimaru wanted a tool, and those were no good broken. "I only take on humans as my students, Kidoumaru. Those prisoners were trying to make you waver in order to undermine me. They are enemies of the Sound, and seek to weaken the Sound. You shouldn't listen to what they say." Kidoumaru was really far too intelligent to take everything at face value, but he was also smart enough to know when it was better for his emotional well-being to believe what he was told and disregard the doubts, so the child nodded, the relief covering up the uncertainties, at least for the time being.

"I believe, Kidoumaru, that this excursion was penance enough in itself. You will not be disciplined, but please do not come into my laboratory again unless I am accompanying you. As you have discovered, there are things in here you are not yet ready for. Please follow me. I will take you back to your teammates."

----

"Kabuto says you snuck into the forbidden place."

"We don't believe him though. You never do anything unless Orochimaru-sama tells you to." The twins looked at him expectantly.

"I. . . I did."

"Kidoumaru the docile actually does something against the rules?"

"Wow, that's weird." Both Sakon and Ukon actually looked impressed.

"What was it like there?"

"Were there monsters?"

"Scary. And I. . . I don't know. There might have been one, but I only heard it. I never saw it."

The twins looked slightly disappointed, but were mollified by the fact that the adventure took place at all. They got up to leave, but at the door, Ukon turned back to him. "Our instructor is taking us out to the forest tomorrow. You want to come?"

Kidoumaru perked up. None of his teammates had invited him to do anything with them before. But after a moment's thought, his enthusiasm lagged. "Tayuya's gonna be there."

Sakon snorted. "So?"

"She doesn't like me."

"That's 'cause she thought you were a wimp. But you went to Orochimaru-sama's laboratory. She can't call you that anymore."

Sakon stuck his head back in the door. "Yeah, come! We need someone to sneak away with and go to the river when our instructor's not looking, and Tayuya won't do it and Jiroubou's too loud."

The instructors had forbidden all of them to leave their sight when they left the village's boundaries, but the instructors weren't Orochimaru-sama. They still muttered when they thought he wasn't looking, they still stared at him with contempt in their eyes. They didn't think of him as human. They weren't worthy of his obedience. They weren't worthy of his respect.

He grinned recklessly at the twins. "Sure. It'll be fun."


End file.
